


back and through and around

by lovebeyondmeasure



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Competency, F/M, Human Disaster Cormoran Strike, Mutual Pining, Sewing, like the MOST mutual pining, the absolute UTMOST pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 09:17:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14615067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovebeyondmeasure/pseuds/lovebeyondmeasure
Summary: Robin craned her neck to look at the closed office door. “Everything alright, then?” she called out.“No it bloody is not alright, my fucking button just came off,” Strike said.





	back and through and around

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LulaIsAKitten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LulaIsAKitten/gifts).



Robin could hear Strike in his office, muttering to himself as he changed into the Italian suit. He was expected for a dinner with a new client, and he was unaccountably nervous. Robin smiled down at her keyboard as he swore fluently at his cuffs.

He was impressively early, which was how Robin knew he was nervous; he was not otherwise known for his strict punctuality, as she well knew. But it was over an hour to the dinner and he was nearly ready, and it was only a twenty-minute Tube ride there. 

“Fuck!” he said suddenly, very clearly. “Are you fucking- bloody fucking useless piece of shit-”

Robin craned her neck to look at the closed office door. “Everything alright, then?” she called out.

“No it bloody is not alright, my fucking button just came off,” Strike said, stumping angrily out towards her. “Just trying to tie my fuckin’ tie, and now this!”

She could see where one of the buttons, part-way down his chest, had come off his shirt; his thick, dark chest hair was peeking through the gap. She firmly suppressed any hint of feeling she had about that, looking up at his reddening face.

“How’d you manage that, then?”

He scowled. “Just said, I was tying my tie, finger got caught, then there it went.”

“Do you still have it?” Robin asked, reaching to rummage into one of her desk drawers. 

“Hanging on by a thread,” he groused. “I’ll have to go change shirts, and this was my only clean white one, dammit.”

“No,” Robin said, finding what she’d been looking for. “Come here, let me fix it.”

The look of surprise that crossed Cormoran’s face warmed her heart, it really did. Robin held up her little sewing kit. “Five minutes and I’ll have you right as rain. I don’t think you’ll even have to take the shirt off. Come here.”

Strike came over to her, awkwardly, his nervous anger suddenly extinguished. Robin didn’t know where this brazen offer had come from, but she couldn’t stand to have him angry about something so small as a button, not when it could be so quickly and cheaply fixed.

Cormoran came to a stop on the other side of her desk, and Robin rolled her eyes, fond and exasperated at once. “Stay there, then. Let me get the needle and thread, and I’ll have you on your way in no time.”

He nodded, now totally silent, and Robin found it a bit eerie as she selected the white thread, sliding it through the needle’s eye on her third try and knotting it firmly. She came around to where Cormoran stood in front of her desk, now fully in charge of this moment. It was a bit of a heady feeling, to be in charge of Strike; she so rarely was in charge of anyone, and certainly not him.

“Hold still, all right? You’ve got plenty of time to get there and impress Ms Walker,” Robin said, coming to stand nearly between Strike’s legs. She was trying to break his tension, trying to joke a bit of her own out. He nodded again, still silent, as she tugged the snapped threads out of the fabric.

Robin took the button, aligning it carefully, and pushed her needle through, focusing intently on the sharp gleam of it in an effort to not notice how very warm he was, how he’d applied some of his seldom-used cologne and thus smelled of bergamot and pine. The dark hair on his chest tickled her fingers slightly as she pulled the needle back and through and around, and his breath was by her temple, stirring her hair. They had rarely been so close, recently.

It was the work of five minutes to have the little pearlescent button reattached, and Robin spent the entire time so focused on the needle that she didn’t see how Cormoran’s eyes were closed, how he had the edge of her desk in a white-knuckle grip, the furrow between his eyebrows from concentrating on breathing evenly. When she was done tying off the thread, she tucked the needle between her lips and carefully re-buttoned his shirt, making sure it would hold. 

He sucked in a deep breath as she brushed off his chest, her slim cool hands pressing above his heart for the slightest of seconds. She stepped back, inspecting her work. 

“There you are, then,” she said, trying to sound cheerful and relaxed, as though she wasn’t still completely aware of how close they’d just been, how oddly secure she had felt nearly surrounded by his bulk.

“Thank you,” he managed, his first words in several minutes. 

“You’re welcome,” Robin said, unfailingly polite, as she went back around to her chair, tucking the needle away, smoothing out her skirt. “It’s what I’m here for.”

“Thank you,” he said again, voice a trifle hoarse. “I’d better, ah.”

“You’ll be fine, you’ve got plenty of time,” Robin said, affixing her usual professional demeanor over her blush as best she could. “Don’t forget your tie.”

“Blast the thing, that was its fault,” he said, and was rewarded by one of Robin’s smiles. “I don’t need it.”

“Well, take it anyway,” Robin said pragmatically. “Better to have it and not wear it than to get there and need it and not have it.”

He sighed. “You’re right.”

“Often enough,” she said, nodding. 

He went to retrieve the offending scrap of silk, along with his wallet and mobile, from his office. He took a deep breath, then another. He’d been nervous about this dinner; Ms Walker was attractive, in her early 30s, with wide dark eyes and short dark hair, and had invited him with a long slow smile that seemed to promise a rather intriguing kind of dessert. As a rule, he didn’t get involved with clients, but it had been a while. And he was far too wrapped up in… 

Well, she was right outside the door, smelling faintly of apples, and without a ring on her finger. She was dangerous, and in all the wrong ways. Ms Walker at least was dangerous in the right ways, the familiar ones.

Cormoran shook his head. He pocketed his things, then went back out to face her.

“If you leave now, you’ll get there with ten minutes to spare,” Robin said, looking up from her computer. 

“Thank you,” he said for the third time, and turned and left.

Listening to his steps fade down the stairs, Robin found herself wondering what would have happened if she’d leaned forward to press against his chest, to discover how his rough dark hair would feel against her cheek. She imagined how his large hands would come up, grasp her hips, how his breath would hitch at her temple, how he might say her name….

He would only say it to push her away, to reprimand her. That wasn’t what they were to each other, not at all. She shook her head, as though to clear the thoughts from her mind. She had to move past this…. infatuation. It was silly.

As he stepped aboard the Tube, fingering the newly-reattached button, Cormoran thought to himself the very same thing.

**Author's Note:**

> For prompt 4 of [100 ways to say I love you](http://lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com/post/173782940339/one-hundred-ways-to-say-i-love-you)
> 
> Hope you like it, Lula dear! Thanks for the prompt!
> 
> Send me your own prompts any time over on tumblr; anon is always on, so you don't need an account!


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